Forever
by A Twisted Vine
Summary: [Inuyasha x Naraku][Short Oneshot][Dark]The crimson only he could see, driving him into such a quiet madness he wasn't sure if the eyes were his own, or not.


**Title: **Forever

**Type:** One-shot.

**Rating:** T

**Dedication:** Alicexdemented

**Summary:** The crimson only he could see, driving him into such a quiet madness he wasn't sure if the eyes were his own, or not.

**Notes:** Wow. This makes no sense. I mean, it does to me, but will it to anyone else. –Dies- This is Inu x Nar, as requested! Sorry the pairing isn't very… I dunno. Well, I tried. Sorry it took so long! XD Those it was interesting writing this, I won't try anything like it again for quite a awhile. If ever… Heh…

* * *

The Shikon burned the skin of his palm, the hushed cries of Midoriko's soul. It was almost unthinkable this minute gem held such forbidden power. Fingers curled around it in a dark caress, his form retracting to hide within that human masquerade. They had fought him, and they had fallen. He, Naraku, was the only one left standing, in the end.

Yet, in this victory he was filled with the hollow gnawing of loss, because it was not the end. In all his plans and schemes, it had never occurred to him what would come _next_.

Grey skies whispered with the curling smoke of a fading flame, swept the lands in warm gusts. And it tugged at loose tendrils until the hanyou was forced to look away from the Shikon, and over the crimson meadow littered with slain, unrecognizable heaps of _flesh_.

It was almost an eyesore, really. To see that crumpled heap of a half-demon struggling to his knees and grabbing for his blade. _Almost_.

He almost felt relieved. Relieved because there was something _left_, a loose thread he could hold on to so he would not stumble.

Almost.

Dark chasms echoed with lost thoughts, shifting and clawing.

Naraku closed the distance between them, towering over that pathetic form.

"Just… kill me," Inuyasha heaved.

The spider tensed, eyes narrowed in mild confusion. To ask – _to beg_ – for that unknown end called death. This writhing, weak hanyou should ask nothing of him. He should tremble in _fear_.

"You do not have such fortune."

Inuyasha met his smoldering gaze, and could not help but whimper.

**)-(**

It seemed fitting the room was dark. Dark so Inuyasha could not see the murky fog of miasma that kept his wounds from healing. The hard floor was cold, but he couldn't bring himself to stand. He had _lost_, and everyone suffered for it.

In some forgotten part of his mind he could hear the voice of Kagome crying out in her frightened way. In her confident way. She knew he would be there to save her, because he had not been there to save Kikyou. And he rarely made the same mistake twice. Rarely.

Her touch was soft, fingertips pressing against his bruised and swollen flesh in a way that made him _hurt_. But this was not Kagome, because she was dead, and he had let her die. His eyes glared through the shadows into the crimson hate that were _his_.

"Do you dream, Inuyasha?" Naraku spoke softly, his voice of empty ice, and his feet touching the floor with a weight that did not match his form. "Did you _mistake_ me for Kagome?"

Inuyasha almost trembled at the way her name slid off his tongue. Almost. He reached out, blindly taking hold of the wretched hanyou's heel and digging his claws into the soft muscle there. Naraku grimaced, kicking him away with a muttered curse. "You will give in eventually."

"Fuck off."

**)-(**

Inuyasha pressed his back to a wall, and ignored the way his cuts opened with each movement. The thick miasma caused them to fester, and refused to allow the wounds to heal. He wondered darkly what kept him alive now, and having not eaten in days, he found himself weakening.

His mind seemed apart from his dying body, wondering back through lost memories and winding through closed doors. Kagome's eyes and hair and voice and _touch_ were fading, disappearing into the deep hole he'd become with no way to scale his walls. He never slept, yet he always awakened. And for hours he'd lie in a heap trying to grab on to that almost serene unconsciousness again.

"You will give in eventually," Naraku would whisper, his foreboding presence stirred a failing flame within him, and Inuyasha would growl.

"Go to hell."

**)-(**

The hanyou dozed in the flighty space between life and death, and willed the latter. He forgot to think why it would not come for him, as it had for his friends, and instead continued to endeavor in this worthless way.

All Inuyasha knew now was the forever darkness of the world where he'd been placed to writhe. The eyes of his captor haunted him, and still it became everything. The crimson only he could see, driving him into such a quiet madness he wasn't sure if the eyes were his own, or not.

"You will give in eventually."

"Never."

**)-(**

Naraku watched him struggle to die, and found it amusing in the sick way that it caused him to shudder. Amusing because the decaying hanyou was already dead, really, and yet he still _tried_. And this is why Naraku continued to watch him, because it was almost like watching himself, now. Almost.

"You will give in eventually."

"No," the half-demon snarled, and began to try harder.

**)-(**

The world around them shifted, turning in the way it always had, and in the way it always would. Both were blind, and yet one went on pretending to see while the other continued to give up his ghost.

Naraku became obsessed with the failing hanyou. Obsessed with the way the hanyou could not see the obvious existence that must not change for him. An existence so painfully clear even Naraku almost failed to see it.

Winding and unwinding, dark fingers would lightly touch the rotting flesh of the other half-demon and say everything with his silence. _You cannot die, because your soul has become my own, and my soul must never die._

And the other would not reply, because everything to be said was said. And to say more would be too much, because he already carried enough.

**)-(**

"You will give in eventually."

And Inuyasha did not answer. He fled himself, screaming with the unseen into a world of eternity.

And Naraku fell into the shallow shadows left behind, haunted by the memory of another hanyou whose soul had become his own. Because he'd had nothing, and it had been everything.


End file.
